Shoreditch

Shoreditch is a neighborhood in the East End of London, England. It was originally an extramural suburb of the City of London, and it was the site of a priory from the 12th century until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539. In 1576, the first playhouse in England, "The Theatre", was built on Curtain Road in Shoreditch. During the 17th century, wealthy traders and French Huguenot silkweavers moved to the area and established a textile industry which would endure until the late 19th century. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a center of entertainment to rival the West End. However, the decline of the textile industry turned Shoreditch into a a center of crime, prostitution, and poverty at the end of the 19th century, and it was devastated during the Blitz in the 1940s, followed by insensitive redevelopment. Shoreditch survived as a predominantly working-class district, but it was gentrified during the 1990s.